COMMEMORATION ADDRESS 
on the SEVENTI ETH ANNIVERSARY 
^///i^FOUNDING ^/KNOX COLLEGE 
AND THE CITY OF GALESRTJRG 



n V k () B E R T M A T H ]>: R 




OLD MAIN BUILDING, KNOX COLLEGE 



COMMEMORATION ADDRESS 
on the SEVENTIETH ANNIVERSARY 
^//^^FOUNDING(?/KNOX COLLEGE 
AND THE CITY OF GALESBURG 

DELIVERED AT GALESBURG 

ILLINOIS, WEDNESDAY 

JUNE 12th, 1907 

By ROBERT MATHER 



M • C • M • V • I • I 



H07 



2s wm 



COMMEMORATION ADDRESS 

ON THE Seventieth Anniversary of the 
Founding of Knox College and the 
City of Galesburg, delivered at Gales- 
burg, Illinois, Wednesday, June 12, 1907 

By ROBERT MATHER 

Ladies and Gentlemen: 

I fear that nothing that I can say will convey 
to you any sense of my appreciation of this op- 
portunity again to speak to a Galesburg and a 
Knox CoUege audience. It was an unearned 
compliment to be asked to make this address be- 
fore you, and you do me undeserved honor to 
listen to me. 

You are all familiar with the story of Antaeus, 
the fabled Lybian ruler who challenged aU 
strangers passing through his realm to wrestle 
with him. He was the son of Earth, and when- 
ever in his struggles his feet touched the ground 
his strength was renewed, so that no mortal 
could overcome him. I sometimes wonder how 
Antaeus would have fared had he been doomed to 
wrestle for a time in one of our great modern 
cities, with its stone pavements and its sewers 



Commemoration Address 

lying ever between his feet and the strength-giv- 
ing soil. How he must have sighed, after some 
ages of such struggle, for the reinvigorating 
fields of Lybia ! 

It is with some such feeling that I come back 
to this place where what I know of the art of 
mental wrestling was taught me, and feel my feet 
touch earth again. What memories of the green 
fields of youth, and the blue skies of hope, and 
the golden atmosphere of inspiration, that touch 
brings back to me ! How the years roll back, and 
the days grow young again, and there come be- 
fore me, present and concrete and real, the college 
and the teachers that opened for me the door of 
opportunity. 

The pictures that a man's mind carries of the 
home and scenes of his youth must usually be re- 
drawn when, after long absence, he revisits the 
realities. Indulgent memory preserves to those 
cherished spots the perspective of youth, and 
paints large to the mind's eye the objects of its 
affection. But when the objects themselves are 
measured in the perspective of a wider experience 
and observation, the mental picture calls for re- 
adjustment. Buildings that loomed large to the 
vision of youth dwindle in size and in dignity; 
distances that seemed great are compassed in 



Commemoration Address 

shortened strides ; spaces that were open and vast 
become narrow and confined; and men whose 
figures stood high against the early horizon as- 
sume statures less heroic and more normal. 

There are exceptions to this general rule, and, 
in the matter of buildings, one exception that I 
have experienced in my infrequent home-com- 
ings is the old main building of Knox College. 
I have often wondered by what process of selec- 
tion, on the mere inspection of catalogues or bul- 
letins or other descriptive literature, a boy chooses 
one from a number of colleges he has never seen. 
What there can be in such a situation to appeal 
to the imagination and to determine the judg- 
ment of the youthful seeker after knowledge, has 
always been a mystery beyond my perception. 
There must be much of the stumbling of chance 
in the making of a choice in such darkness. Of 
course, I do not speak of the favored children of 
affluence who do not choose, but are sent, to col- 
leges and universities whose fame is an all- 
sufficient magnet, but of those boys of humble 
circumstance but impelling ambition, who must 
pinch from the meager means that but meet ne- 
cessities an almost impossible surplus for college 
needs. Fortunate the boy, in such a state, whose 

5 



Commemoration Address 

unguided choice turns him to such a college as 
Knox. 

But for the youth of that class who, like my- 
self, chanced to live in Galesburg, the choice was 
easier and more certain. Before the eye and the 
imagination of such a boy there stood in daily 
attitude of inspiration the old college building. 
To him it was the brick-and-mortar incarnation of 
learning itself. Behind its modest walls the 
world-compelling secret of Knowledge dwelt, 
and at its doors Invitation on tip-toe beckoned 
him to its possession. If only he could but pass 
the fearsome dragon yclept Entrance Examina- 
tion, that stood guard at the gates, the key and 
the scepter of Power would be within his grasp. 

For all this the college building stood to the 
Galesburg boy, and for all this it still potentially 
stands. The years have given ample opportunity 
for comparison, but have furnished no reason to 
wonder or to feel ashamed that the unpretentious 
pile of red brick once meant and promised so 
much. It still stands, to my spiritual and my 
physical vision, as an adequate expression of the 
college building. And I return to its presence 
with an abiding satisfaction that Time has taken 
nothing from its simple dignity nor robbed it of 
its features of appropriateness and sufficiency. 



Commemoration Address 

Another exception to the general rule which I 
have stated is furnished by the men whose figures 
filled the foreground of my vision through the 
college days. It soon became apparent after we 
had entered upon the work of the college course, 
that it was not, after all, the college building, or 
its class-rooms, or its library, or its equipment, 
that was really the college. There were times, of 
course, when we students thought that we were 
the college — times, also, when we felt that we 
were both the college and the town. But as these 
illusions, characteristic of the earlier years of the 
course, wore away or were worn away, and the 
deeper significance of our surroundings and our 
occupations was borne in upon us, we came to 
realize that the college consisted, in all that it 
was and did, of a small group of sober men. And 
how the figures of those men grew as the chang- 
ing needs of the college work brought us nearer, 
first to one and then to another! How our con- 
ception of their importance changed, as the hear- 
ers of recitations, the deliverers of lectures and 
the mentors of manners, grew into guides of our 
ambition, moulders of our character and f ramers 
of our destiny! And what a wealth and variety 
of character and of temperamental attributes that 
little group of men displayed to the student 



Commemoration Address 

minds which it was their duty and pleasure to 
uphft and ennoble. It makes one young again 
only to recall the unceasing enthusiasm of Pro- 
fessor Churchill, typifying, at the same time that 
it led and inspired, the very spirit of youth itself. 
How sweet the memory of serene Professor 
Comstock, calm and unmoved as the changeless 
science he taught ! What inspiration there was in 
the spiritual exaltation of Dr. Bateman, pointing 
the soul ever to thoughts beyond the daily task! 
Who among us is not stronger for contact with 
the high ideals, the stern resolve, the unbending 
devotion to duty, of Professor Hurd ? And what 
a human touch there was in Professor Willard, 
who, austerity itself in the class room, joined in 
our sports on the campus and set before the eager 
eyes of youth a model of mature and well-poised 
manhood. 

My youthful estimate of the size of those fig- 
ures has never lessened. On the contrary, the 
farther time has removed me from the immediate 
influence of their lives and teachings, and the 
more I have seen of other men, the greater have 
they grown in dignity, in strength and beauty 
of character, and in aptitude and capacity for the 
tasks they performed. And the greater, too, has 

8 



Commemoration Address 

grown my sense of appreciation of the silent 
tragedies of their simple lives. 

It may seem strange to you to attach the idea 
of tragedy to the quiet life of a college professor 
in a small and untroubled community. We are 
apt to link the conception of tragedy with the 
fact of some great upheaval. But there is a 
tragedy of the glacier, as well as of the earth- 
quake, though it moves without noise and de- 
stroys without explosion. And I can conceive of 
no simile more apt or pathetic than the picture of 
a strong man, confined by circumstance within a 
chasm of narrowed opportunity, overtaken and 
crushed by the slow-moving glacier of time. 
Understand me : I would not belittle the work of 
the men whose memories we now crown with our 
affection. It was, in a high sense, a great priv- 
ilege to them to have impressed upon so many 
plastic souls the mould of their own high char- 
acter and aspirations. For us who sat at their 
feet and had the opportunity to learn wisdom — 
though we did not — it was a great blessing that 
they so well performed, through us, their lofty 
duties to society. But what might not those men 
have made of themselves, with their brilliant 
talents, their tireless industry and their placid but 
persistent love of the pursuit of knowledge and 

9 



Commemoration Address 

truth, if fate had found for them seats in some 
well-dowered university, where duty as well as 
inclination would have forced them into fields of 
original research, and where greater freedom 
than was here possible from the daily grind of 
class-work, would have given them leisure for 
self -development and self-expression. What dis- 
coveries might they not have made; what books 
might they not have written; what reputations 
might they not have builded beyond the ken of 
their own school and the memories of a single stu- 
dent-body. We who were the beneficiaries of 
their self-sacrifice, and the unconscious instru- 
ments in the overloading of their burdens and the 
narrowing of their lives, may well sigh that these 
widened and broadening opportunities were de- 
nied them. 

It is a natural step to turn from thoughts of 
these great teachers to the deeds and virtues of 
the founders of the college. Three of the five 
whose names I have spoken reached back, in 
memory and active association, to the men who 
laid the foundation, and to those who first labored 
on the superstructure. They drew from the 
fount itself, and kept alive through their own 
direction of the affairs of the college, that in- 
spiration of self -consecration and of self-sacrifice 

ID 



Commemoration Address 

that was the very spirit and meaning of the foun- 
dation. They spanned by their own hves the Hfe 
of the college, and kept the guiding hand of the 
present in touch with the benedictions of the past. 
Within the year that is closing, death has severed 
the last of these living ties and loosened our final 
hold upon the vital figures of our college history. 
The living body of the college spirit, which has 
heretofore been resident among us, has become a 
memory. It is fitting, therefore, that we pause 
at this time to refresh that memory, and to con- 
secrate ourselves anew to its preservation. 

Had precedent been followed, this meeting 
would have been held on the fifteenth of Feb- 
ruary. Whatever the circumstance that caused 
its postponement until to-night, I hold it a mat- 
ter of peculiar significance that we heed not dates 
in commemorating the founding of our college. 
The Act of the Legislature of Illinois, passed 
February 15, 1837, granting a Charter to Knox 
College, merely recorded a fact that already had 
vital existence. The passing of that Act might 
fittingly be deemed the laying of the corner- 
stone; the foundation already lay strong and 
deep beneath it. The laying of the corner-stone 
is a ceremonial that catches the eye and holds the 
attention, but the things that precede it are the 

II 



Commemoration Address 

verities that touch the heart and that call us here 
to do them reverence. While, therefore, we do 
well to set aside a certain day for our devotions, 
we do quite as well to use for that purpose any 
other day of the calendar. 

We are accustomed nowadays to the founda- 
tion and enrichment of colleges and universities 
by men of wealth. For myself, I am disposed to 
applaud such gifts from whatever source they 
come, for I know of no better way to consecrate 
money to the good of mankind and to purge it of 
whatever of sordidness may have attached to the 
making of it. I have no sympathy with the con- 
ception that money should not be accepted for 
high purposes merely because the man who ten- 
ders it ought not ethically, perhaps, to possess it. 
I can not forget that when our Lord advised the 
rich man to sell all that he had and give to the 
poor, He did not stop to ask whether the rich 
man had made his money in oil or steel, in stock 
manipulation or through rebates from common 
carriers. And I have always felt that the Saviour 
of men, in giving this advice, had as much in 
mind the good that would come to the rich man 
through parting with his money as that which 
would accrue to the poor in receiving its benefits. 
Indeed, it was as a means of salvation to the rich 

12 



Commemoration Address 

man himself, that this course of conduct was pre- 
scribed. He is not, therefore, to my mind, a 
comprehensive follower of Christ, who would 
deny to any possessor of wealth the means of 
grace and regeneration which the dedication of 
his money to educational or charitable purposes 
affords him. 

The giving of the rich out of their abundance, 
however, misses one of the elements of grace that 
was the distinguishing mark in the foundation 
of Knox College. The conception of the college 
had origin neither in the brain nor in the purse of 
the rich. Indeed, the real founder of Knox was 
not only not rich — he was poor. Nay — not only 
had he nothing, but, in the providence of God, 
there had been taken away from him even that 
he had. Educated for the service of God and 
dedicated to His ministry, the misfortune of fail- 
ing health had disappointed his ambition and 
forced the abandonment of his career. Here was 
poor soil indeed in which to look for the germi- 
nation of the seed from which a college should 
grow. Yet to this sorely stripped man, bare of 
worldly possessions, broken in health and bereft 
of his soul's hope to serve the Lord in His vine- 
yard, the vision came, and to him was given the 
strength to make the vision a reality. Having 

13 



Commemoration Address 

nothing else to give, he gave his life to the en- 
dowment of this college. 

How paltry against such a life-gift are the 
money-gifts of the rich, which cost to the giver 
neither life, nor service, nor curtailment of pleas- 
ure, nor denial of desire! And how rich is the 
college that is thus endowed! Knox has never 
listed among her tangible assets this foundation 
endowment from George W. Gale, yet without 
that resource, and the similar gifts which its ex- 
ample inspired, the money means of the college 
would never have sufficed to perform its work. 
For, from Kellogg to McClelland and the mem- 
bers of the present teaching staff, there has been 
neither president nor professor nor tutor at Knox 
who has not from year to year freely given to the 
college something of his life, that in better en- 
dowed institutions would have been, in part at 
least, compensated in money. 

We can not dwell too much upon the lasting 
influence of that foundation gift. It not only 
founded the college, but it gave character for all 
time to the institution it created. Not only was it 
a sacrificial offering in itself ; it has been until now 
the inspiration to sacrifice by others. Its first ef- 
fect was in the formation of that wonderful plan 
under which the exodus from the State of New 

14 



Commemoration Address 

York to the promised land of the West was con- 
ducted. Through this plan the example and in- 
fluence and eiFort of Mr. Gale had enlisted in the 
task of realizing his educational vision forty-five 
other earnest souls. Note that I say he had en- 
listed souls in his enterprise. Men and women 
they were of modest but not unsubstantial means ; 
but it was not their money alone that he sought, 
and it was not their money alone that he received. 
They gave of themselves, as well as of their sub- 
stance, and accompanied him not only as sub- 
scribers but as co-laborers in the work he had 
designed. 

The spirit of self-sacrifice that had inspired the 
enterprise and sustained the founders in their 
migration, failed not upon the successful comple- 
tion of their plans. Indeed, with the opening of 
the college doors the days of abnegation were but 
begun. Responsibility, it is true, passed to the 
newly created college organization, but its weight 
was not lessened nor was devotion relaxed. The 
mantle of Gale fell upon the shoulders of Kel- 
logg, and has been worthily borne by him and his 
successors until now. 

The true education of youth, whether con- 
ducted in the home, by the State, or through 
privately endowed institutions, is always a labor 

15 



Commemoration Address 

of love and self-sacrifice. We all know what of 
pain and suffering and self-denial comes to the 
loving parent in the performance of that sacred 
duty in the home. But we are apt to forget that 
something of those burdens is cast upon the shoul- 
ders of tutor and professor and college president 
whenever the responsibility for further education 
of the boy or girl is lightly transferred from the 
home to the college. And we know nothing at 
all — ^most of us — -and think little, even if we 
know, of the weight of that responsibility upon 
the mind of the conscientious teacher ; of the sac- 
rifices he makes of himself, of his hopes and his 
pleasures in order that he may fit himself worthily 
to discharge that responsibility; of the strenuous 
struggle, often with inadequate equipment and 
resources, to enable himself and his department 
to keep pace with the winged march of modern 
research and discovery ; of the long, discouraging 
years of weary work, hardly compensated beyond 
mere daily sustenance, with no provision possible 
for age or misfortune or for loved ones left be- 
hind. Such burden, in full measure, has been 
the reward of those who have carried on the work 
of the founders of Knox, from Kellogg to Fin- 
ley and McClelland, with all their self-sacrificing 
aids. 

i6 



Commemoration Address 

It is true that for the customary reward of 
our commercial age they did not look, and did 
not care. Their occupation was not merchandiz- 
ing, and their profits were not to be read in 
ledger or in bank account. But profits there 
should have been, otherwise would their efforts 
have been in vain. And profits there have been 
and are, in such measure as to justify their en- 
deavors and to satisfy their souls. 

Fifteen hundred persons have completed the 
prescribed course in the college founded and pre- 
served by the efforts I have traced. Between 
five and six thousand other young men and 
women have received more or less complete in- 
struction within her walls. They were youth of 
sober minds, seeking an education not because 
it was fashionable, but that thereby their lives 
might be made broader and more useful. Most 
of them were of humble means, to whom distant 
universities offered impossible opportunities, and 
whose thirst for learning must have gone un- 
slaked but for this fountain at their doors. Some 
have been children of the poor, pinched by pov- 
erty and working their way through college, yet 
finding in the perfect democracy of the college 
life and spirit unreserved w^elcome and unstinted 

17 



Commemoration Address 

opportunity, and winning often the highest hon- 
ors of the course. All of them have come within 
the influence of the spirit of piety, of self-sacri- 
fice and of devotion to learning and to high ideals 
of life and conduct that cemented the foundation 
and has pervaded the existence of the institution. 
I do not know how many of them have con- 
sciously realized it, but the benediction of the 
lofty purpose and consecrated endeavor of the 
founders and teachers has breathed upon them 
all and made them better. They have gone their 
ways into the four corners of earth, reflecting 
honor upon the school that reared them and 
spreading its influence beyond the reach of its 
fame. Many of them have won eminence in the 
sacred and learned and artistic professions, in the 
marts of trade, in journalism, in literature, in 
diplomacy, on the bench, in Congress and else- 
where in the service of their country. Others 
have achieved greater success in the living of per- 
fect lives that are not told in the newspapers. 
Statistics would weary you, and the bubble rep- 
utation usually reflects anything but the real 
emptiness it so often conceals, so I refrain both 
from figures and from personal mention. I hold 
it peculiarly significant, however, of the pervasive 
and continuing influence of Knox College as an 

i8 



Commemoration Address 

instrument of education, that by far the greater 
number among its graduates engaged in the pur- 
suit of any one occupation, are those employed 
in the consecrated task of teaching. 

It is not given to us to know how far the souls 
that have gone before now have cognizance of 
the interests and affections they left behind ; but 
if George W. Gale could know what lives have 
been touched and what careers have been shaped 
by the instrument that he had conceived and 
created, he must feel that the tasks with which he 
burdened his frail body while here have borne for 
him an ample recompense. To the teacher who 
counts his compensation in cultured minds and 
ripened character formed under his instruction, 
Knox has been more generous than her salary 
lists certify. No finer present reward for human 
endeavor could be conceived than that accorded 
to Professor Hurd, who for nearly sixty years 
was here privileged to see an unending proces- 
sion of youth taking on, as they passed, some- 
thing of the impress of his own high soul. 

The story of the founding of Knox has its 
lessons of practical suggestion as well as of 
ethical and sentimental interest. They were not 
impractical visionaries or religious fanatics that 
clasped hands with George W. Gale in his ex- 

19 



Commemoration Address 

pedition for the establishment of a seat of learn- 
ing in the unsettled West. Hard-headed busi- 
ness men there were among them, devoted to the 
altruistic enterprise and earnest in its support, 
yet far-sighted enough to see that philanthropy- 
planted in the fertile soil to which they were 
going would produce sufficiently to reward both 
the beneficiary and the benefactor. This feature 
I mention not in derogation of the single-mind- 
edness of the founders, but as a tribute to the 
soundness of their schemes and the sanity of their 
efforts. Indeed, I count it among the most 
praiseworthy of their acts that, of their own voli- 
tion, they bound their own fortunes, with con- 
tinuing ties of self-interest, to the fortunes of 
the college they created. 

In the establishment of the college the founders 
acted as promoters and organizers of a corpora- 
tion. We are told that, as an original endow- 
ment for the college, the founders with their own 
money purchased from the Government a half 
township of land at one dollar and a quarter per 
acre, and then, to supplement the initial gift, 
bought back from the corporation part of these 
same lands at an average price of five dollars per 
acre. They thus gave to the college in advance 
the anticipated increase in the value of the lands 

20 



Commemor ation Address 

that was expected to flow from their own efforts 
in the estabHshment of the college and the build- 
ing up of a community about it. I betray no 
secrets of my profession when I say that such are 
not the methods by which the capital stock of 
corporations is ordinarily nowadays paid in. 

Having thus generously endowed with their 
labors, their lands, their money and their hopes 
the sanctified corporation they had created, the 
founders turned each to the lands he had re- 
purchased at four times their original cost, in the 
confident hope that the success of the college and 
the growth of a city around it, together with their 
own industry in the care and cultivation of their 
lands, would still further multiply the value of 
their possessions and thus reward their efforts. 
It was strong-hearted faith and enduring pa- 
tience that inspired that hope, and only the long 
labors of the pioneer, sustained by unwavering 
purpose and intrepid courage, made its realiza- 
tion possible. Yet the realization came, not al- 
ways, perhaps, to the founder himself, but with 
certainty to his children, and in rich abundance 
to their children after them. What a legacy one 
of those farms would be to-day — held in direct 
descent from one of the founders, multiplied in 
commercial value by the success of his philan- 

21 



Commemoration Address 

thropic efforts, made delightful as a place of 
residence by the proximity of the college and the 
cultured community which his piety and devotion 
had helped to found, and glorified by the act of 
renunciation through which the title was first ac- 
quired ! Who among us would not envy the for- 
tunate possessor of such an estate? And who, 
devoted to the laws under which we live, would 
deny to him the right to enjoy the pleasures and 
the profits of his possession? 

But let us suppose that the founders, instead 
of making distribution of the lands bought back 
from the college, had conveyed them to a private 
corporation, and had taken shares of stock for 
their respective interests. Shares thus issued at 
the rate of a dollar and a quarter per acre could 
justly be said to be fully paid, for that was the 
actual value of the lands at the time. Possibly 
an issue at the rate of five dollars per acre could 
have been justified, though three-fourths of that 
amount represented, not the value of the land, 
but the faith of the stockholders in its future. 
But if shares had been issued at the rate of one 
hundred dollars per acre, the transaction must 
have been condemned, if certain views now held 
had then prevailed, as a gross example of over- 
capitalization. Yet those hundred-dollar shares, 

22 



Commemoration Address 

I am told, would long since have commanded a 
most attractive premium in the Galesburg mar- 
ket. 

I feel that I owe you an apology for obtruding 
upon such an occasion so sordid a thing as this 
kindergarten problem in corporate capitaHzation. 
But this was a risk that your Committee assumed 
on your behalf when a mere slave of commercial- 
ism like myself, instead of some emancipated man 
of letters, was asked to make this address before 
you. Besides, one part of the work of the 
founders lay in the domain of commercialism, 
and I deem that portion of their labors also 
worthy of commemoration. They founded the 
city of Galesburg as well as Knox College. 

I have no patience with the cant that speaks of 
this as an age of commercialism, as though that 
fastened upon the times a badge of degeneracy. 
In the development of man the desire for acquisi- 
tion and for traffic follows closely upon the pri- 
mal instinct for self-preservation and the secon- 
dary aspiration for companionship. It is, there- 
fore, the first spring of human conduct after 
those inspirations that are essential to preserve 
the race. It has been the directing spirit in all 
human development. We point to any promi- 
nent page in history only to see behind the pa- 

23 



Commemoration Address 

geantry of courts and camp the mercenaries of 
trade. There have been periods, it is true, that 
art has adorned, and hterature ennobled, but they 
were times also upon which commerce had piled 
its riches. Our own national life dates from a 
revolt against the imposition of a tax upon tea. 
Our Federal Constitution grew out of the ob- 
jection to state regulation and taxation of inter- 
state commerce. One of the great works of 
Washington was not as soldier or as president, 
but as surveyor and promoter in estabhshing a 
line of water communication between the Ohio 
and the Atlantic in order that the commerce of 
the great northwest should flow to the American 
coast rather than to a Spanish port at New Or- 
leans. We fought Great Britain in 1812 because 
of her interference with our commerce on the 
high seas. It was the industrial as much as the 
moral aspects of the slavery question that forced 
the War of the Rebellion; and business is at the 
bottom of our problems in Cuba and the Philip- 
pines. 

The very vastness of our domain, the unparal- 
leled wealth of our natural resources, our geo- 
graphical isolation and our consequent freedom 
from wars and leisure for the occupations of 
peace — all have conspired to make us, perforce, 

24 



Commemoration Address 

a nation of traders. Problems of statesmanship 
and of war we have had from time to time, and in 
God's providence have solved them ; but these are 
not the occupations that have framed the national 
character. Indeed, the great problem that has 
occupied the activities of our people from the 
time when restless homeseekers from across the 
seas landed at Jamestown and Plymouth Rock 
until now, has been the very task to which the 
founders turned when they left the crowded East 
to plant a colony in the unvexed prairies of Il- 
linois. The development of our national re- 
sources, the opening of our lands to settlement, 
the planting of men upon the soil, the founding 
and upbuilding of towns — these are the occupa- 
tions that have invited the ambition, engaged the 
talents and occupied the time of our people. In 
their modest way the founders performed the 
labors that absorb the captains of industry of our 
days. They built a college in the hope that a 
town and a farming community might grow up 
around it and prosper with its prosperity. They 
invested their means in the enterprise, they staked 
their future upon it, they gave their energies to 
its direction, and they gathered and are con- 
cededly entitled to the profits which its success 
produced. 

25 



Commemoration Address 

They thus typified the mightier forces that 
since their times have undertaken the develop- 
ment and exploitation of our domain. Now a 
railway is built into unsettled territory, in the 
hope that people will come upon the soil, produce 
crops, build cities, demand the necessaries, the 
comforts and the luxuries of life, and thus fur- 
nish traffic to the railway and make the venture 
profitable. Or great coal fields or timber lands 
are developed, or mines opened, or mills or fac- 
tories or furnaces erected, all in the faith that the 
increase of our population and the growth of 
their demands will justify the risk, multiply the 
investment and reward the effort. And from 
these beginnings all the complicated movements 
of modern commerce ensue. In all these projects 
we miss, of course, the spirit of piety and be- 
nevolence that inspired the deeds of the founders, 
but in all of them are present the courageous 
initiative, the bold hope and the earnest striving 
that not only marked the undertaking of the 
founders and made it successful, but are the dis- 
tinguishing features of our national character. 
To these traits of the national mind the task of 
developing the country, with its challenge to 
strength and daring, its exciting chance of suc- 
cess or failure, and its alluring promises of ac- 

26 



Commemoration Address 

complishment and of profit if the venture wins, 
has always made a strong appeal. And the re- 
sponse to that appeal has been a settlement of 
our territory, a development of our resources, a 
growth in population and an increase in wealth 
unparalleled in history. 

I would not have you understand that I think 
this is all there should be in a nation's life, or that 
I commend altogether the commercial spirit of 
our day. I am not sure that we have grown in 
intelligence, in grace and in love and charity for 
our fellow man in like ratio as we have grown 
great and rich. And I am quite sure that we 
make poor distribution of the rewards of all 
these tremendous efforts and, in consequence, set 
up false standards of success. We are much in- 
clined to overlook the noble means employed in 
our commercial movements, and to see only the 
sordid end. We make too much of mere money, 
and measure men by their possessions rather than 
by their achievements or their character. I hold 
that the engineer who finds a line and builds a 
railroad through impassable mountains does a 
greater work and deserves better of his fellow 
men than the man who manipulates that rail- 
road's stock in Wall Street. It should be con- 
sidered a greater achievement to design or to con- 

27 



Commemoration Address 

struct a beautiful building like the New York 
Stock Exchange, than to make a fortune 
gambling within its walls. The discovery and 
perfection of the marvelous modern processes of 
steel-making is a greater achievement than either 
the organization or the conduct of a billion- dollar 
steel corporation. Yet, withal, our commercial 
activities present no cause for enduring shame 
or despair, for, in days of peace it is through 
a citizenship contentedly occupied in successful 
and honorable commerce that a nation wins its 
way to greatness. 

Permit me to emphasize the fact that I have 
used the term honorable commerce, and to direct 
your minds to some reflections which that term 
suggests. 

The great commercial enterprises of to-day are 
almost exclusively conducted by corporations. 
Against this fact of itself no intelligent criticism 
is directed. The corporation presents manifest 
and admitted advantages for the development of 
industrial opportunity, especially in making ef- 
fective the capital of scattered individuals who, 
but for this agency of co-operation, would not 
readily be brought into united effort. The cor- 
poration as an agency, therefore, is concededly 
a necessary and useful factor in our industrial 

28 



Commemoration Address 

life. But concerning the methods of organiza- 
tion, of management and of control of some of 
our great corporations, facts of late have been 
revealed that have shocked the conscience and 
stirred the anger of the people. Every form of 
crime conceivable of commission by or through 
or against a corporation has been displayed in 
proof — enormous over-capitalization of com- 
panies whose shares were to be sold to the public 
at fictitious prices under cover of respectable 
names; gross discrimination by common carriers 
and consequent oppression of competitors by the 
favored shippers; criminal misuse of the trust 
funds of great life insurance companies for the 
private benefit of individuals; the use of the 
favors and power of great railroad corporations 
for the private gain of the officer wielding the 
power; the making of private profit by trustees 
for the stockholders in their dealings with the se- 
curities and property of the corporation. And 
with the commission of each of these off*ences 
there have been connected some of the greatest 
names in the world of industry and finance. The 
sensationalist and the demagogue would have us 
believe that the whole commercial fiber is rotten; 
and denunciation of "corporate management," 

29 



Commemoration Address 

without distinction of persons or corporations, 
fills the press and deafens the public ear. 

Let us be warned, in this inquiry, against the 
loose mental habit of generalizing from insuf- 
ficient premises. The eighth commandment was 
the law before our Anglo-Saxon system of juris- 
prudence was born or conceived; yet it has been 
universal human experience, from Sinai until 
now, that wherever articles of value are left un- 
guarded some human being will be found to ap- 
propriate them, in violation of that law. The 
generality of this experience, it is true, does not 
abate the condemnation of the crime or the prose- 
cution of the criminal, but neither, on the other 
hand, does the commission of the crime warrant 
an indictment against the human race. If the 
thief happens to be a man high in society and 
prominent in business or public affairs, the head- 
lines in the newspapers are justifiably larger, but 
the essential fact remains that one man has com- 
mitted a crime. And if a dozen, or a score, or a 
hundred of such thieves are uncovered, it does 
not yet follow that all men are thieves, or even 
that all other men engaged in like occupations are 
to be condemned. 

I make no apology for the crimes disclosed in 
these investigations, and I hold no brief for the 

30 



Commemoration Address 

culprits there discovered. But I have not, on 
account of these disclosures, lost my faith in my 
fellow man. The facts that have been made 
known are sensational and bad enough, in all con- 
science, but they touch only the edge of the field 
of corporate activity, and smirch but a spot of its 
broad expanse. The members of the dishonored 
you may count on your fingers; but their name 
is legion whose lives of honor, of rectitude and 
of probity have adorned the history of corporate 
management and dignified the commercial career. 

One figure only has been starred before the 
public in these investigations — the accused. The 
short and simple annals of the unsuspected lack 
the features of sensationalism that call for start- 
hng pages in the press, and printers' ink has not 
been wasted upon them. I speak for the man 
who has not had part in these inquisitions, and 
whose cause has not been heard — the average, 
honest, business man. And I assert, in spite of 
the sad spectacle of these revelations, the es- 
sential honesty and integrity of American busi- 
ness, of our business corporations, and of our 
business men. 

I deem it a privilege to be permitted to bear 
this message to an audience of youth, fitting 
themselves for life's activities. The path of op- 

31 



Commemoration Address 

portunity for many of you will lie through the 
very fields of industry occupied by these great 
corporations. It will be your fate to serve them, 
to aid in creating and upbuilding them — perhaps 
to control them. I would not have you believe 
that their methods are essentially dishonest, or 
that success in their service is won through dis- 
honor. It is not so. I should be but a poor mes- 
senger of hope to these youthful souls if, after 
twenty-five years spent in the midst of such ac- 
tivities, I should bring back to this school, where 
my own aspirations were moulded, a message of 
a different tone. 

It is with earnest conviction that I proclaim 
this gospel of the essential honesty of our busi- 
ness life. Of no time could this proclamation 
more confidently be made than the present, for 
an awakened corporate conscience, roused by re- 
cent events, has sharpened the sense of commer- 
cial integrity, and holds close to the eyes of cor- 
porate directors and managers their duties and 
their responsibilities. It is due to this common 
honesty, as well as to the generations that have 
not yet had their chance, that industrial oppor- 
tunity shall not be destroyed in the effort to cure 
the evils that recent revelations have laid bare. 
It behooves society, of course, in such a situation 

32 



Commemoration Address 

as the present, to try to throw greater safeguards 
around its treasures, but it would hardly be 
deemed a necessary or a wise precaution to tie 
the hands of all humanity. It might even be bet- 
ter that an occasional theft should still be possible 
than that all mankind should be thus affronted, 
and its possibilities for useful activity thus 
paralyzed. 

Do not misunderstand me. Wrongs have re- 
sulted from corporate over-capitalization, and 
they should be prevented. But they can and 
should be prevented without denying to the in- 
dustrial pioneer the right to capitalize not only 
his cash investment, but his risks, his faith, his 
labors and his hardships. Knox College would 
never have been founded had the law at the time 
limited the ultimate financial reward of the 
founders to a fair interest return upon the five 
dollars per acre invested in their lands. 

Nor do I argue against the regulation of the 
business of common carriers. It is now the full 
span of a generation since an honored alumnus 
of Knox College, sitting in the Supreme Court 
of Illinois, concurred in a decision which estab- 
lished the principle on which rests the power of 
the government to make such regulations. I have 
never questioned the soundness of that principle 

33 



Commemoration Address 

or feared for the consequences of its enforce- 
ment. I venture to hold the opinion, however, 
that it is neither just that regulations to be en- 
acted in enforcement of this principle should be 
conceived in a spirit of vengeance toward those 
who have oiFended against the laws, nor wise that 
commercial opportunity should be so hmited that 
neither capital nor ambition shall longer be at- 
tracted to the activities that have made the nation 
commercially great. It may further be doubted 
whether, as a nation of individualists, we are quite 
prepared, without more consideration than has 
yet been given the subject, for bureaucratic con- 
trol of the methods of conducting our business 
affairs. It remains to be demonstrated that a 
government department can justly compute in 
advance the profits that should be permitted to 
any given industrial enterprise. We have yet to 
learn that the mere fact that a man holds a com- 
mission from the government throws around him 
the mantle of infallibility, or clothes him with the 
impenetrable armor of righteousness. 

There should be no fear of a wise and just de- 
cision of these questions if they were really an is- 
sue before the people. Our history presents no 
more impressive spectacle than the settlement in 
1896 of a question purely economic, on which 

34 



Commemoration Address 

parties were sharply divided, and of which the 
debate had been earnest and exhaustive. But 
the questions to which I have referred present the 
anomaly of filling the public mind without divid- 
ing party opinion. In a free government hke 
ours nothing is more to be feared than the license 
of uninstructed conviction. And concord of 
party policies, in a situation that has incensed the 
people, is not conclusive evidence of wisdom. 

But I fear that I weary you with these worldly 
thoughts. The light in which we love to look 
upon the founders is that which beats upon their 
higher purposes and illumines the unselfishness 
of their souls. In that light let us remember 
them. Seventy years now separate us from that 
completed act of theirs from which we count the 
life of college and community. Tradition only 
spans the space and tells us what manner of men 
they were. But it needs no longer tradition or 
living voice to tell the manner of things they did. 
Thereof the living memorial lasts in the spirit 
of the institution they founded. Consecrated to 
God, but to no creed; endowed by life-service 
rather than by weath; founded in love and sus- 
tained by enduring self-sacrifice — let us dedicate 
ourselves to its continuance. 



35 



^ili'V 



'■J'tiu't^i 




i' 



i *' J 



^".^ 



).f , 






